We drive on to another project Monderman designed, this one in the nearby village of Oosterwolde. What was once a conventional road junction with traffic lights has been turned into something resembling a public square that mixes cars, pedestrians, and cyclists. About 5,000 cars pass through the square each day, with no serious accidents since the redesign in 1999.

Point: Counter Point

Granted, however, is the fact there is not much conclusive comparative statistical data available. It sounds like it’s well worth getting that info, but.

A MAN who ate 10 cans of tuna a week for nearly two years is suing the US canned food company Bumble Bee Foods for allegedly giving him mercury poisoning.

…

“There was tuna in my diet every day, just about,” Mr Porrazzo said.

“I thought it was the cleanest source of protein.”
…

He is blaming it on the canned tuna and wants unspecified damages for breach of warranty and negligence from the fish cannery. But he is also suing the supermarket chain – for putting the tuna on sale.

Mr Porrazzo says he started eating the seafood in January 2006 because Bumble Bee commercials called it “heart healthy” and the brand was “usually on sale” for $1 a can.

You’d think orbiting your diet around one particular food would encourage some extra research. Apparently not in this day and age.

“Experts theorise that albacore, because it is a short-lived species, would tend to have less mercury than bigger, longer-lived tuna such as Blue-fin or Big-eye Tuna. And, by the same theory, the younger and smaller the albacore, the better. For the tuna fan, perhaps the best approach is to buy quality, not quantity, a strategy that the current canned tuna wave encourages.”

Myth: The amount of mercury in our environment (and in the fish we eat) is dangerously increasing.

The truth: There’s considerable evidence that the amount of mercury in fish has remained the same (or even decreased) during the past 100 years.

One team of researchers from Duke University and the Los Angeles County Natural History Museum compared 21 specimens of Atlantic Ocean blue hake preserved during the 1880s with 66 similar fish caught in the 1970s. They found no change at all in the concentration of mercury.

In another study, Princeton scientists compared samples of yellowfin tuna from 1971 with samples caught in 1998. They expected to find a mercury increase of between 9 and 26 percent, but they found a small decline instead.

Like this:

MORE than $13 billion in inactive or lost superannuation accounts is about to be taken by the Government unless the owners claim them.

Laws introduced last year by the Federal Government mean that, from this month, funds in inactive super accounts can be transferred into consolidated revenue. It is estimated that the government will fill its coffers with about $10 billion from these accounts in the next five years.

Essentially, a desperate Wayne Swan is trying to steal my Aussie superannuation which is a considerable amount.

Here’s the trick: Is my account “active”? i.e. Have there been employee or personal contributions over the last five years? If not, Swan swipes my stash.

Well, Swannie, here’s to squashing your swipe.*

Nice try, Duck.

BTW, Wayne, the idea of superannuation is that money I, an Australian citizen, have earned and put in Super is protected.

Like this:

“The Iraqi nation is vigilant and aggressors cannot dominate this country again,” Mr Khamenei told Mr Maliki, according to a statement put out by his office. “May God get rid of America in Iraq so that its people’s problems are solved.”

As Jim Treacher points out, surely it couldn’t “be that the Tea Partiers are exactly what they claim to be, for exactly the reasons they claim to have, because that would mean a wholesale rejection of Obama and everything he stands for. And who in their right mind could possibly believe that?”

From Washington’s who’s-in-charge-here perspective, the tea party model seems, to use Wildman’s word, bizarre. Perplexed journalists keep looking for the movement’s leaders, which is like asking to meet the boss of the Internet. Baffled politicians and lobbyists can’t find anyone to negotiate with. “We can be hard to work with, because we’re confusing.”

Like this:

Pajamas Media has published a few excellent articles surrounding Islam in the West, namely what’s been happening to Dutch Politician, Geert Wilders, recently. The rubbish case against him is due to be dropped. PJM delves further.
Andrew G. Bostom:

In April 2008, during his keynote address to the first conference of the Association for the Study of the Middle East and Africa, Professor Bernard Lewis warned of the ominous limits on scholarly analysis of Islam imposed by political correctness and multiculturalism:

The degree of thought control, of limitations on freedom of speech and expression is without parallel in the Western world since the eighteenth century and in some cases longer than that. … It seems to me it’s a very dangerous situation, because it makes any kind of scholarly discussion of Islam, to say the least, dangerous. Islam and Islamic values now have a level of immunity from comment and criticism in the Western world that Christianity has lost and Judaism has never had.

The politicized prosecution of Dutch MP Geert Wilders for his free speech criticism of Islam is a case study illustrating Professor Lewis’ most grave concerns. But it is also possible that the outrageous proceedings against Geert Wilders may have pushed the Western freedom-stifling agenda of Islamic correctness too far.

Agreed. The West must be able to discuss this issue more freely and openly.

One of the most bizarre aspects of being an American in Western Europe — at least if you’re an American who has opinions and is used to expressing them freely — is getting accustomed to the fact that there’s no First Amendment over here. Some of us grew up thinking of Western Europe as part of the “Free World.” But how free is a country if it doesn’t recognize freedom of speech as a fundamental right?

…

This trial wasn’t really about him or about Islam. It was about individual liberty. It was about fundamental rights that are enshrined in the First Amendment to the U.S. Constitution, but that in Western Europe are incredibly fragile — a fragility of which the “soft jihadists” haven taken full advantage.

As a foreigner in Korea, sure, I will never assimilate completely. And I’m lucky that English is an international language that Koreans are keen to learn. But that doesn’t mean I can order a pizza or get in a taxi and just start ranting on in my native tongue. Also, I had to learn how to use chopsticks, and yes, I bow a lot. I’ve learnt to read their alphabet and know a lot of rudimentary stuff which gets me by day to day. My upcoming wedding will have many Korean aspects to it. My diet has changed somewhat.

I certainly do expect for Koreans to bend over backwards to accommodate my lack of language and cultural skills. That’s my problem. It’s ridiculous that everything be translated into my native language. That I could come here and receive welfare? You have got to be joking.

Anyway, all three articles are well worth reading in their entirety (and yes, I know I’ve given you guys a lot of work today).H/T Insty

Like this:

Somewhere within the coils and folds of the frontal lobe of his cerebral cortex, one assumes that there is a synaptic connection, however weak, that is trying to communicate to President Obama that he is, in fact, a mortal human being, and thus capable of normal human failings. It is only an assumption, however, and certainly not one based on empirical observation. To listen to Obama speak out there on the campaign trail – and when has he ever not been on the campaign trail? – one could be forgiven for concluding that here is a fellow who seems to be under the impression, not only that he was conceived without sin, but perhaps that he was never conceived at all – at least not in the mundane biological sense – that he simply popped out of the godhead as the personification of one of the almighty’s particularly good ideas.